


Wings

by rathernotmyname



Series: Fictober! 2020 [9]
Category: Papillon (2018)
Genre: ...well - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Fictober! Day 9, I'm Sorry, Idiots in Love, M/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathernotmyname/pseuds/rathernotmyname
Summary: Louis muses about freedom while in prison. One thought stays until the end.
Relationships: Henri "Papillon" Charriere/Louis Dega, Henri “Papillon” Charriere & Louis Dega
Series: Fictober! 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050200
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note:  
> I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING HOSTED OR REPOSTED ON ANY UNOFFICIAL APPS OR WEBSITES OTHER THAN ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN WITHOUT MY APPROVAL, PARTICULARLY APPS WITH AD REVENUE AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES.

The pencil scratched across the paper, words written small and hastily. 

_‘It’s getting on my nerves’_ was already written down in tight, neat, cursive letters, lead smudged from the force the words had been angrily pressed onto the paper. _‘If only-’_

“Dega,” Papillon’s gruff voice called out. Louis lifted his head, squinting in the low evening sun. Papi nodded his head in the direction of the showers. The last batch of prisoners trailed out, shivering and dripping. 

Thank God, Louis thought as he shut his notebook and hid it in a nook in the brick wall he was leaning against, pushing a fist of dry grass into the left-over gap. So far it had been a good hiding place, for more than just the notebook. Unbeknownst to Papi, this was where he had hidden the money until he had ridden out the cramps and diarrhea from his bite, shaking with fever as well as fear every night, praying that he wouldn’t find it raided the next day.

His uniform was sticky with sweat and stank like something unholy, and Louis had the fierce desire to stand underneath the icy jet of water fully dressed, but he refrained, knowing that he had only this one uniform and lock-up was in merely a half-an hour. There was no time to dry his clothes, just barely enough to get dry himself. 

They collected their bars of soap and washed of the dirt and sweat of a long day on route zero, Papillon always one step behind him, never taking his eyes off him. In this case, Louis was very grateful, because a few unwelcome “guests” were already waiting for them.

Only a few punches and kicks were able to be exchanged until the guards came crashing through the doors, whistles shrilling and batons at the ready. Dega got away with a swollen eye when one of them shoved him aside against a wooden beam to break up the headlock that Papi had one of the inmates in. Papi emerged uninjured and more or less victorious, but he was still in a bad mood when they were locked up for the night. 

Maybe he lost his soap, Louis thought while cooling his pounding head by leaning it against the wall, Papi’s eyes following him. 

Two years later, he held Papi’s hand, whispering “us” back and forth like it was the most beautiful word he had ever heard in his life. And maybe it had been, because out of Papillon’s mouth it was the truth, and nothing but the truth, entirely unlike the “us” he had shared with his wife an eternity ago. 

She had forsaken him, and there was Papi, a man Louis had known for only a few months, not counting the two years of solitary confinement, and still he knew that he was a man of his word and would not break it, would not run away without him again. 

He thought about writing that train of thought down, but in the end he never had the opportunity to do so. Instead, his notebook began to overflow with butterflies, big, small, detailed and less detailed butterflies. 

Every now and then a face was to be found between them, but it didn’t fall out of line. 

It scared Louis how much his notebook told about himself, and he shared that worry with the source of the problem, even though he didn’t use those exact words. Papi laughed when he described the contents of his notebook as ‘increasingly monotonous’.

“Perhaps you have simply found your art style,” he grinned, blonde stubble almost translucent on his cheeks, and yet Louis was captivated by it. 

Maybe just so that he didn’t have to meet Papi’s eyes.

One morning, one of the last days before their planned prison break, the notebook fell from his hands as he was just about to hide it in the nook again. It had been loyal to him over all this time, compromising it now through his own clumsiness felt almost as if someone dear to him had died. 

He scrambled to pick the book up again before someone saw him, stuffing it still opened into his shirt as he heard the tell-tale shuffling of inmates returning to the courtyard from work. 

He made sure that his hiding place was camouflaged, then turned to sit on a walkway away from the groups that played cards or compared the lengths of their dicks or whatever they did. 

The book was leafed back to one of the first pages, still defiled with crooked portraits of his wife. With a grimace, he made to rip them out, but came up short at the fourth page. 

“If only” was bearably readable anymore, but it brought back a lot of the feelings he’d had the day he had written them. He took a fountain pen he had stolen from the warden’s office and made to complete the sentence, but a sudden way-ward thought made him stop in his tracks. 

Before he managed to identify said thought, he had already forgotten it again, but still he closed the pen and the book shortly after. 

It’s not the time yet, he thought as he hid the book and returned to his barrack, but for what he couldn’t say.

Five more years later, us had become I’m waiting for you, and Dega had neither a notebook nor a pen anymore, but now he had time. 

So much time, and at the end of any road he dreamed of at night was Papillon. 

“Were you waiting for me?” Louis asked him one night, wrapped in weary but strong arms and trying not to cry out of pure and utter relief. 

“What made you hold out?”

Papi sighed, a warm breath in Louis’ hair that had become too wild to pull a comb through, if he’d been in the possession of one. 

“Funnily enough,” he started, pulling Louis a little closer, “that’s exactly what the warden asked me, too.”

Louis stayed silent, feeling impatient but not wanting to ask his question again. He wiggled out of Papi’s embrace to look into his eyes.

“Did you dream?” 

Of me, was the unspoken addition, but both of them could hear it clearly.

“Yes. Did you?”

A scoff. “You know the answer to that.”

Louis watched Papillon’s eyes wander across the painted walls, stopping at the one that bore his face.

“Yes, I think I do.”

A grin made its way over his face, infecting Louis with it’s refreshing mischievousness. 

“You always were a hopeless romantic, Dega.”

Louis snorted, partly in indignation, partly in abashment, because it was true, but how dare Papi say it?

They kissed, and then they kissed again, then they had sex, they cried, and kissed some more. 

At some point Louis’ weakened body gave up the ghost, and Papi, still exhausted from years of silence, joined him on the sleeping mat shortly after. 

“Do you think they have forgotten me? At home, I mean,” Louis asked after a while, his back against Papillon’s chest, his arms slung around him once more. 

“I don’t know, Louis,” Papi answered quietly, holding him a little tighter. 

After a few minutes of silence, he added determindedly: “I won’t let them forget you. I will let the whole world know about you, and about your courage and loyalty and what you mean to me. I’ll show them all. I promise.”

Louis reveled in the way his first name fell from Papi’s lips, from Henri’s lips, even though he personally thought Papillon fit him better. 

He glanced at the two coconut floats, the bottles tied to them glinting dully in the dying firelight, and sunk deeper into Papi’s arms. 

Even if everyone should forget about him, Papillon would make them remember. After all, he was a man of his word.

As he watched Papillon vanish on the horizon, bravely swimming towards a different life, he remembered his long forgotten notebook. As soon as he had returned to his hut, he took a sturdy twig, dipped it into the mashed fruits that made up his black paint, and wrote underneath one of the butterflies, drawn in mid-flight.

_‘If only a man could grow wings.’_

Then he sat down outside and watched the sunset, and it was the most beautiful one he had ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, first of all. This was hard to write, and probably a little hard to read.  
> Second of all, this gave me an idea for another thing I could write, but I'll get to that later.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
